OU Baseball: No. 9 Oklahoma Falls at Home to LSU
A pitcher’s duel unfolded Thursday night at L. Dale Mitchell Park.
In the end, it was LSU’s Kade Anderson who fired the best shot.
Anderson threw a complete game shutout and struck out a career-high 14 batters against Oklahoma as the No. 7-ranked Tigers beat No. 9 OU 2-0 in Norman.
“It was a good game,” OU coach Skip Johnson said on his postgame radio show. “You gotta tip your hat off to the way their guy pitched. Threw a complete game shutout.”
OU fell to 23-6 overall and 5-5 in SEC play, while LSU improved to 28-3 and 8-2.
Anderson allowed just five hits and two walks to keep the Sooners off the scoreboard — OU’s second shutout loss of the season.
It was the first time an opposing pitcher twirled a complete-game shutout against OU since Kansas State did it in 2015. The game took just 2 hours, 27 minutes.
LSU and OU meet again for Game 2 at 6:30 p.m. Friday.
Anderson threw 135 pitches to outduel OU ace Kyson Witherspoon, who threw six strong innings — four strikeouts, one walk, six hits but four doubles — and yielded just two earned runs.
After Witherspoon left in the seventh, OU reliever Jamie Hitt came in and pitched three 1-2-3 innings with four strikeouts.
OU loaded the bases in the first inning against Anderson, but that was the closest Skip Johnson’s club came to turning on the scoreboard.
Easton Carmichael hit a one-out single to left, and Sam Christiansen singled through the left side to move Carmichael to third base. Jaxon Willits walked to load the bases, but Anderson struck out Kyle Branch and Drew Dickerson to end the threat.
“The guy made quality pitches when he had to,” Johnson said.
Meanwhile, LSU scratched across single runs in the third and fifth off Witherspoon, which was plenty to support Anderson.
Jared Jones and Chris Stanfield delivered the RBI hits for LSU.
Christiansen led the Sooners with a 2-for-3 night at the plate with a double and a walk, while Carmichael, Willits and Dayton Tockey each collected singles.
